In the baling of cotton in the United States it is common practice to press the bales at the gin site to a density of 12-20 lbs. per cu. ft. Bales pressed to this density are known as "flat bales". They are fitted with 10'3" steel bale ties. Because of the bulk of these "flat bales" and their consequent high transportation cost, the bales are shipped from the gin site to a centralized storage and recompression installation, the "cotton compress", where the bales are recompressed to a smaller size and a density of about 30 lbs. per cu. ft. The smaller bales are known as U.D. (Universal Density) bales. They are fitted with 6'10" steel bale ties.
The practice in the past was to use steel band ties for cotton baling at both the gin and the compress. At the compress the band ties were removed from the flat bales, flattened out, cut to a shorter length, 7'6", and reused on the compress bales along with the buckles which were part of the original ties. Frequently cutoff sections were spliced together to form the new shorter ties for the compress bales.
Hot rolled steel band and buckle combinations for the baling of cotton are no longer produced in sufficient quantity to supply the demand. Many of the gins and the compresses are converting over to the use of steel wire bale ties. One end of a wire tie, for example, is formed into a hook-like fastener and the other end is formed into a loop-like fastener. The two ends are attached together to secure the tie around the bale.
The conversion from steel bands to wire bands has led to a search for ways and means for efficiently salvaging at a low cost the flat bale wire ties for use on U.D. bales. A recent development along these lines has been the provision of machines which straighten and cut the flat bale wire ties to the U.D. bale tie length requirement and which then, in a separate operation, form each end of the 6'10" tie into locking configurations. Such reworking of the ties is a slow operation in the overall sense due primarily to manual handling and feeding of these machines. This procedure also results in the loss to scrap of the 3'5" length of the original tie which is cut off to adapt the remaining 6'10" section for conversion in the U.D. bale tie.